Virginia tells Indian woman to marry fiance or get out

Virginia tells Indian woman to marry fiance or get out
PRESS TRUST OF INDIA

WASHINGTON, OCT 2: An Indian American, Arathi Jayaram, who has been protesting against the cruel treatment of cows in India as a member of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), is fighting in a Virginia court for the right to stay with her lover without marrying him, while under probation.

Jayaram, 23, had been convicted for tossing a tofu pie at Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman on May 30 during a demonstration. She was convicted of a misdemeanour by the U S district court and sentenced to two years of probation and community service. The court had ordered that supervision of her probation be transferred to Norfolk, Virginia, where she lives.

Jayaram reported to her probation officer and, when asked for her address, said she had just signed a lease with her fiance. The officer then told her she had a week to get married or move out.

Virginia is one of the 12 states out of 50 in the US which still have laws that prohibit cohabitation without marriage. Jayaram was ordered by her probation officer to marry her fiance or vacate his house.

``Jayaram is receiving `unfair treatment because she is a member of PETA','' her Alexandria-based lawyer, Philip Hirachkop, told reporters yesterday.PETA is waging a virulent campaign for the boycott of Indian leather unless Indian cows are treated better.

Hirachkop has filed a motion in the U S District Court for Jayaram to be exempted from the Virginia law on the ground that his client had committed no crime of moral turpitude by living with her lover. In 36 years of practising law in Virginia, he told reporters, he has never heard of any such prosecution.

The Virginia law against living together without marrying is intended, according to the law, to prevent engaging in ``fornication'' and ``lewd and lascivious cohabitation''.

The lawyer says it is hard to prove these actions. Countless adults in Virginia, including well-known officials, he says, are cohabiting but no one is enforcing the law against them. ``We have really got the fornication police running loose in Norfolk,'' he said.

``Ms Jayaram loves her fiance and they plan to get married, but they should not be forced to get hastily married pursuant to an edict of a probation office, nor should the court get itself into the business of ordering shotgun weddings,'' the lawyer said in his plea to the court.

Hirschkop cites a case law in his motion, a 1979 decision to reverse the denial of a Virginia bar licence to a woman who lived with a man.

In a news release sent out in September, Jayaram said ``I am being punished for living in a state that only recently banned cockfighting and is now trying to pass a law making hunting for fun a constitutionally protected activity.''

Research conducted by the University of Wisconsin has found that 430,000 American males and females lived together without marrying in the 1960s. Now the number is 4.25 million. Cohabiting was illegal throughout the country until about 1970. ``Fornication'' is punishable in Virginia by up to a $-250 dollar fine while ``lewd and lascivious cohabitation'' is punishable by a $-500 fine.